


Ceremonial Weapons (The How to Play the Pawn while Advancing your own Agenda Remix)

by cleo (miri_cleo)



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Dubious Consent, M/M, Mirror Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-10
Updated: 2010-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-12 13:51:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/125550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miri_cleo/pseuds/cleo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So many things used to frighten Wesley Crusher, and Picard was one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ceremonial Weapons (The How to Play the Pawn while Advancing your own Agenda Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Naraht](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/gifts).
  * Inspired by [How to advance your career through marriage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/71769) by [Naraht](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht). 



Do I dare   
Disturb the universe?   
In a minute there is time   
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.  
~T.S. Eliot "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

The starfield hung stationary in his view, and he stared until the anonymous points of light began to waver and spin. He remembered looking up at them as a child, looking at them with a quivering lip in fear and wonder. The sky was the place that swallowed his father whole time and again and eventually forever. Wesley had been afraid of them; he had been afraid of everything. His mother had so yearned to be swallowed up by the sky too. As a boy, he did not understand it. Perhaps he did not truly understand it now. Had she loved him in some way? Had his mother loved either of them?

Whether she loved him, he could not question. He could never let himself ask because he was too afraid of what that answer might be. He had clung to her skirts as a child, and he clung to her memory after that, telling himself that he could continue like this because it was all for her.

 _"Come to dinner with me. There are some things that we need to discuss."_

"What, now?" He hadn't understood why his mother jerked his arm so hard. He was excited, proud. He understood what was happening to their family; he wanted to show off. He hadn't been able to make sense of the flash of anger in Picard's eyes. And even now, over and over again, he wondered if he had made the decision then.

 _"Can't you leave the brat somewhere?"_ Wesley could remember those words more clearly than the sun on his face that day, than the playground that his mother had taken him to more than once. But his mother never had, and even though he had not understood why she so easily replaced his father—then, at least, he had not understood then—he clung to the fact that she had not left him behind on Earth.

He gritted his teeth to the dull pain that he had resigned himself to endure, eyes open, body tense. That was the way he liked it, and Wesley had taught himself to hold back any sound. He had not always been quiet, but with his mother gone, he was finally silent. That's what _he_ had said—there was no one left to listen to his wheedling now. But that wasn't true. Little pitchers had big ears, and there were those aboard the enterprise that were thirsty for the things he filled himself with.

"Always quiet." Wesley had not noticed that the weight atop him had shifted. His knuckles were white with the crimson sheets balled in his fists. "Not like your mother in the least."

Wesley could see his face as he fell naked and sweating onto the bed beside him, but Picard merely gave him a glance. He had seen the same gesture directed to his mother before. No one would say whether her death was accidental, but Wesley had accepted it wide eyed and bereft of words, just as he had accepted the sudden and traumatic loss of the baby, of his brother, when he was a child. Picard had killed them all in one way or another.

"But you certainly enjoy it, don't you, Wesley." He drew in a sharp breath when Picard touched him and with all his might wished himself flaccid in that moment. But his body betrayed him, as it always did. Perhaps his mother's had betrayed her.

"Amazing how much you favor poor Jack," Picard murmured, something between malice and triumph in his voice. That was why Picard kept him around—at least, that was what Riker said. Some rumors lived for a very long time. No one would openly question Jack Crusher's death, but that Picard wanted Jack's wife…that he wanted, perhaps, more than just that…that he wanted Jack himself, both of them together…

Wesley shuddered as Picard pulled his hand away, tugging roughly. He folded back, sitting on his knees, looking down on the man with one of his father's charming smiles. There was no need for him to say anything. Picard already had a new captain's woman, and Wesley was just a dalliance.

"Go on then…" Picard said, waving his hand dismissively. His mother had told him that sunny day that he would have to accept for once that he was not the most important thing. Picard never had. At his command, Wesley began to touch himself, his cheeks flushed, bringing an empty laugh of delight from Picard. Wesley would let him think it was embarrassment, modesty. He would let him think that his quick, uneven motions, the uncontrolled jerks of hips were the ineptitude and the uncontrolled desires of youth. His anger was his own.

"What are we going to do with you, boy?" Picard's eyes were dark, but they were laughing.

Wesley's chest heaved and his hair stuck to his forehead. He lowered his eyes to his own sticky hands as he mumbled, "Whatever you want."

The worst hurt his throat. They tasted of blood, of pain, of the secrets that he had been too young to understand and too cowardly to admit to himself later. Wesley slowly rose, knowing that when he returned, Picard would be snoring. He was not as young as he had once been, and there was no need to keep himself awake for conversation. There was no need for conversation at all with Wesley. After his mother's death, it had been unspoken, and Wesley had not protested.

When he returned to the bedroom, having washed his hands in cool water instead of the sonic cleaner, it was just as it was every other night. The sheets were stained dark but already drying. Picard's chest was rising and falling, the white hair there vibrating with his soft snores. Wesley pulled on his pants as he watched, suddenly unsure. For a man so feared, so despised, Picard slept well, even with the ceremonial weapons he collected all around him.

Wesley knew he had already wasted enough time watching, thinking. This was neither a time for thought or chatter, and he chose a blade without really knowing which ritual it was meant for. It was sharp. It would be quick. Poison, Riker said, was a coward's weapon. Poison could be easily hidden, but Wesley had no illusions about his role in Riker's plan. A pawn need make more of a scene than dispensing bitter apples. He was supposed to slit Picard's throat cleanly. Wesley moved closer, watching the rise and fall of his adam's apple. He held the blade in his now sweating hand, and when he plunged it down into Picard's heart, the weight, the resistance of human flesh and bone surprising him, the captain's eyes flew open.

It was or his mother, for his father, for his unborn brother. But the words stuck in Wesley's throat, caught in his rage and his horror. It took longer than he expected, but that didn't matter. As Picard's body began to cool, he slid to the floor, his back against the bulkhead. He couldn't see any answers in those dead eyes, but he felt satisfied by what he saw for that brief moment, the surprise that flashed in the maelstrom of anger and indignation that lit them as Picard's life had drained away.

Security would be there soon, and after them, Riker. But the stars were still hanging in the yawning emptiness beyond the viewport, and Wesley was finally done clinging to his mother's skirts. Wesley was the captain's assassin.


End file.
